Monday, November 17, 2008

Dogs that bite

Should dogs that attack humans be put down?

Yes, definitely.

In April this year, in a small rural town in New Zealand, a woman in her 50s died after being attacked by two aggressive pit bull dogs while out walking at 7 am. These dogs just dashed out of the unfenced house and were unprovoked. Neighbors tried to intervene and an ambulance was called, but it was too late. The woman’s body was all mangled and she died at the scene. The irony was these two dogs belonged to her nephew and grieving was very hard in this close extended family.

The law in New Zealand stipulates that these two dogs be put down or euthanized. Animals are animals, when they have tasted blood, they will want to taste blood again. Dogs are descended from wolves. The media called for pit bull dogs to be banned in the country.

I watch Cesar Millan on TV. He is the "Dog Whisperer." He makes dog handling so easy. Cesar Millan is shown on our Television with his own series and on Oprah. I watch with awe the way he trained ferocious dogs. I remember watching a case where a dog would aggressively bark and chase any one including a frequent visitor the moment the visitor enters the yard. After Cesar’s training, the dog stopped this undesirable behavior. But Cesar said when a dog has bitten a person and tasted blood, it can never be trusted again.

As a personal testimony as to why I don’t like dogs, this is the reason. When I was a teenager, I lived in a cul-de-sac. The house at the beginning of the road had two fierce dogs. They were un-neutered mongrel dogs which expressed much more aggression when they come into sexual maturity. They jumped over a low fence and would chase anything and anyone. They would chase cars whilst barking fiercely. It was very frightening with the dogs close to your heels.

Once I was cycling home, the dogs gave me a chase, and I fell. One of the dogs bit my buttocks. His teeth sunk into my buttocks. My mother took me to the doctor where he had to sew stitches to seal up the bite wound. As a young female teenager, I was very embarrassed having to expose my buttock to a male young doctor. I had to go back to his surgery every day for his nurse to clean my dressing. It was a terrible experience. I didn't dare to cycle again.

The neighbors who owned the dogs were unfriendly. They were like “Hell Angels” and nobody dared to approach them to complain about their untrustworthy dogs. Many of the other neighbors had similar experience of being intimidated by these dogs. We didn't tell them about my sad incident. It also gave me a phobia about dogs.

Many years later, when my daughter was five, she was playing nice with a boy from next door in our yard. A Doberman from three houses down the road chased them without provocation. Luckily they were not very far from my patio.

They ran screaming, “The dog! The Dog!”

I quickly opened the kitchen door for the children and shut it before the dog could dash in. The dog had scraped my glass door with its paws and bared his teeth and terrified the children. The Doberman is a powerful and a strong breed. Up to this day, my daughter who had turned twenty-three, still remembers this incident.

Should dogs that attack humans be put down? I say yes, because they can never be fully trusted again.